Monday, November 29, 2010

Last week Mini-Me had a book fair at his school, so being the Uber-Dad that I am, when he asked me to please come, I told him I would.

All you parents have been to one of these things, haven’t you? The school decides to sell books to kids, and the kids are all gung-ho about it not because they love to read, but because they get to miss class for 30 minutes.

So, I showed up and Mini-Me, bless his heart, came running over to me with a big proud grin on his face and gave me a big hug. I wonder how many more years I am going to get that kind of reaction from him. Probably not too many.

Anyway, the greeting I received almost made the whole trip worthwhile.

Almost.

Actually, things were going swimmingly at first. We picked out a new Goosebumps book to buy, which is fine by me since I am the designated story-reader every night and I swear by all that is holy if I have to read Skippyjon Jones one more fucking time I think I am going to kill someone.

Anyway, as we were standing there, browsing the books on the big, oak library shelves, my son decided that it would be a dandy idea to throw his body against one of the shelves and lean into it. Just to test a theory he had on Momentum, I guess.

Now here’s the rub. Because the book fair was held in the gym, these shelves were on wheels, and therefore perhaps didn’t have the solid footing that they would have had if they had been place firmly on terra firma.

Regardless, my son should NOT have decided to lean into it.

Anyway, I was looking down at the book in my hand, when suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the world start to move.

I looked up to see, to my horror, that this huge honkin’ bookshelf was beginning to teeter over!

Being the take charge man of action that I am, I dropped what I was holding and tried to grab the monstrosity before it reached its tipping point.

Wanna know how THAT went?

Here’s a hint. Did you ever see one of those lame comedies where some bumbling idiot walks into a library and tips over a shelf, and it knocks into another shelf, which hits another, and then, like a set of dominos, the entire library crashes into each other biggety bam? Scenes like that in the movies usually end with the pissed off librarian yelling “GET OUUUUUT!”

Yeah, well that’s basically what happened next.

The fucking crash was DEAFENING, as the bookshelves collided together and hit the floor.

Seriously, it was a disaster area. Tattered and bent Juny B Jones and Spongebob covers the floor like confetti.

Kids started screaming. Mothers started screaming. I’m pretty sure I started screaming.

After the dust settled, I turned around in horror to see about 200 pissed off adults all looking at me like I was Satan incarnate.

That’s when I realized that every damn person there thought that I was the one who knocked over the bookshelves.

What is a father to do? I was VERY tempted to point to the fat kid in the corner who was laughing at me, and yell out, “Hey, it wasn’t me! It was that little shit over there!”, but in the end, I took my dirty stares like a man. After all, Mini-Me was near tears himself and I wasn’t about to give him up.

I’m selfish, but not THAT selfish.

I wonder if my invitation to be the class parent to take the kids to see The Nutcracker next month is gonna be revoked?

P.S. Sorry for no posting last week. Broken record, I know. My excuse this time is that I had the week off, and as you all know: No Workie, No Bloggy.

P.P.S. Thanks to all of you who have been helping me test my blog to see if we can fix the issue that some people are having.

Let's be honest here - You saw "Green Eggs And Ham" on the bookshelf, and lunged to grab it before another kid could get his little mits on it, thus knocking the shelf over, and probably several children in the process.

Oh my gosh! It's amazing that you can't do anything these days without protecting yourself from fifteen hundred and seventy two ways people could sue you, yet they put unstable bookshelves in a children's book fair. They sort of asked for it. Glad no one got hurt!

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